Tag Archives: redistribution

David Piachaud of the London School of Economics last November published an article claiming to successfully refute Philippe van Parijs’ famous argument for basic income from his 1991 paper “Why Surfers Should be Fed: The Liberal Case for an Unconditional Basic Income.” He claims that the fatal flaw of van Parijs’ argument is that he does not take into account the crucial distinction between the voluntarily and involuntarily unemployed. Unfortunately, Piachaud overlooks or underestimates van Parijs’ lucid explanation of why both are entitled to the basic income. In this article, I try to show why van Parijs’ argument is unaffected by Piachaud’s critique.